State Terrorism

50,000 lives were sacrificed to the President’s delays, denials, and bungling of the coronavirus cries in the interest if the Dow and his re-elecetion. Its as though he could shoot 50,000 people on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

And how many more thousands will now “die for the Dow” by a reckless reopening of the economy, coupled to a direct political attack on social distancing, masking, and related measures of public safety. Killings on top of killings?

How many others sickened and died from the pollution of the air and waters unleashed by somewhere between fifty and one hundred deregulations of industries in the interest of corporate profits and political gains?

How many people died when they were unable to get health insurance through the ACA–blocked in the interest of insurance companies and the president’s obsessive envy of Obama?

What illnesses and shortened life expectancies have come from denial of food stamps to poor people and school meals for their children?

What lifelong psychological and physical injuries have been inflicted on young children permanently separated from their parent and held in cages at the nation’s southern border?

What do we call this? Serial killing? Yes, but by means of the state apparatus: it’s State Terrorism.

Marshall Sahlins is the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Chicago. His books include: Stone Age Economics, The Western Illusion of Human Nature and On Kings (with David Graeber).